Pharmacists Reaffirm Equality With Medical Doctors

The National chairman of Nigerian Association of Hospital and Administrative Pharmacists (NAHAP), Martins Olanipekun Oyewole,‎ has taken a swipe at the Nigerian medical sector and concluded that there was need for equal treatment, in terms of remuneration, irrespective of area of specialization

He said health workers should be treated equally since they are working as a team to achieve common goal: the welfare and good health of patients, adding that no one should be seen as being superior to the other.

Oyewole, who made the observations at the just concluded 17th Annual Scientific Conference of NAHAP, therefore advised President Muhammadu Buhari to look at the job evaluation report and accord workers in the health sector their due accordingly to avoid incessant strike by health workers. “Outside that, resources need to be reinforced into the Healthcare industry.

Funding needs to be adequate for research services and it is when this is done that the populace can have the benefit of democracy as healthy nation is a wealthy nation.” ‎

On the tussle between doctors and the other health workers he said, “You find a situation in which somebody, who is being employed is dictating the amount he should earn and he places a ceiling on the remuneration for other colleagues. “It is very wrong, it is the employer that should fix the remuneration.

Outside that there should be equity and there should be an objective way to remunerate workers.” He decried the disparity of wages in the sector, saying medical doctors are consuming the bulk of the remuneration in the health sector. “The health indices in Nigeria is about the worst in the world; resources are going down the drain daily without results because the doctors are gagging the Healthcare industry unnecessarily.

They are pretending to be the most important in healthcare delivery, whereas it is teamwork, no category of health worker is more important than the other. We are equal stakeholders in Healthcare delivery.”

According to him, in the engineering profession, the civil or electrical engineer can not claim to be more important than a mechanical engineer. “The essence of pharmacy practice is for patients to have optimal benefit of their medication and if they don’t get that they may develop adherent issues, complications, fake and counterfeit drugs and the profession would be challenged.

When they have adequate knowledge they would be able to impact positively on the health of the populace.”

The outgoing national chairman of the Association, ‎Yakubu Maji, said people should see medical workers as team players, who are working to achieve common goal “Healthcare is a team work, just like a football team, because a player cannot just take the ball from the goalpost to the other post to score.”

According to him, “a player has to pass it to the other players in the team, like the defender to the left winger and then the striker to score, so it is a team work”.